Think Crew and CineLog get compared because both import a script, both break it into breakdown sheets with numbered elements, both put the scenes on a stripboard with day breaks and scene splits, both let several people work it at once, and both keep working offline. So on the schedule, the overlap is close. What I usually like to do is pick on the shape of the production instead of the feature list, because an AD and a UPM scheduling a series across scenarios and units and a crew of 25 shooting one script in twelve days lose things in completely different places, and these two tools are built around those two shapes. So if you got here by searching for a Think Crew alternative, or for apps like Think Crew, this is the long answer.
One thing before we start. Everything in here was checked on November 2, 2026. The CineLog side against the app itself, version 1.5.6. The Think Crew side against their site, which only renders in a real browser, so I rendered it, their help center, their changelog and their blog. Think Crew’s pricing page disagrees with itself on one number, and its help center carries a bulk refresh date from October, so read every number as correct on that date and check again before you decide.
Short summary
CineLog is the pick when the board is one link in a chain the crew runs together. When the script is written and revised in the same project, with locked pages, A-pages and colored revised pages, rather than edited after an import. When the DP’s shot list runs in day order next to the board with the cast numbers on it. When the day becomes a call sheet with a status next to each name, which Think Crew hands to a spreadsheet or another tool. And when the crew needs native apps on phones, not a web page added to the home screen.
Think Crew is a scheduler for ADs and UPMs, built by a former line producer, in a browser since 2019 and rewritten from scratch in 2025. Import a Final Draft file or a PDF, or a Scriptation breakdown, get a breakdown sheet per scene with element IDs you can lock and SAG drop-and-pickup rules on the cast, build boards for several units under several scenarios, split a scene into parts, print a live day out of days across all units, and read and write Movie Magic files, the Universal Schedule Standard it authored, Cinapse files and the Casper call sheet workbook. It’s priced per user at $10 a month, or per production for a crew.
Those two paragraphs are the article. Everything below is the reason for it.
Let’s put a real production on the table
So we’re not talking in the abstract, let’s invent one. Let’s call it Harbor. It’s a scripted feature, about 90 pages, twelve shooting days, a crew of 25. Four locations, and two of them are out of town where phones drop to one bar. Six people need to change things in the plan. That’s the director, the first AD, the DP, the producer, the script supervisor and the production designer. The other nineteen need to get a call sheet every night and open it in the morning. We’ll come back to Harbor in every section, because the numbers only mean something on a real crew.
When CineLog is the pick
| Production shape | Why CineLog |
|---|---|
| A scripted shoot of two to twenty days, like Harbor | Script, breakdown, strips, shot list and call sheets are one chain in one project. Think Crew is the breakdown and the board, and hands the sheet to a workbook or another tool. |
| A script written by the production | A full editor from a blank page, with locked pages, A-pages, OMITTED scenes, colored revisions and asterisks. Think Crew edits an imported script and renumbering replaces lettered scenes with plain numbers. |
| A DP who runs the day from a shot list | A shot list per production day with cast numbers on the rows. Think Crew has no shot list. |
| Six editors on a regular plan | Free collaborators with view or edit rights per tool. Think Crew’s Individual plan caps invites at three per project, and unlimited needs the per-production Team price. |
| A crew on phones | Native apps on iOS and Android with the whole project on the device. Think Crew is a web app you add to the home screen. |
Head to head
Prices are in US dollars, checked November 2, 2026.
| Think Crew | CineLog | |
|---|---|---|
| Script | Imports PDF and .fdx, and Scriptation files, an editor for imported scripts with scene headings, action, dialogue and shots, OMIT and tagging, no writing from scratch, no Fountain | Editor from a blank page, imports .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF, text with a diff on re-import |
| New draft of the script | Revise Script compares the old and new draft, shows every change with a checkbox and ingests what you accept | Scene-by-scene diff on re-import |
| Revisions | A revision color and date stored per script, no page lock, renumbering turns 12A into a plain number | Scene and page lock, A-pages, OMITTED scenes, standard colors, asterisks, revised-pages-only export |
| Breakdown | A sheet per scene from the import, elements with IDs you can renumber and lock, hold days and SAG drop-and-pickup rules, categories mapped to the Universal Schedule Standard | Tagged from the script text into twelve categories, cast numbered for you |
| Stripboard | Yes, scenarios sharing one breakdown, boards per unit, day breaks with call times, automatic sort-and-add days, scene splits into parts, a recycle bin, strip and palette designers, a duration view | Yes, day breaks, boneyard, strip colors, scene splits across days, board PDF |
| Day out of days | Yes, live, per script or episode, combined across units, with totals you can paste into Movie Magic Budgeting | No report yet |
| File exchange | Reads and writes Movie Magic .mmsx and .msd, the Universal Schedule Standard, Cinapse files, exports Casper and Excel | PDF and FDX, Fountain, text for the script |
| Shot list and storyboards | No | Shot list per production day, several frames per shot |
| Call sheets | No builder, exports to the Casper workbook, SetHero or Call Sheet Commander, sunrise and sunset as banner variables | Yes, from the schedule day, sent per person with tracking |
| AV script | No | Yes, with a client review link |
| Collaboration | Real-time, with live avatars and permissions per document | Real-time, free collaborators, roles per tool |
| Works offline | Yes, end to end, after downloading each document, one project at a time, last update wins on conflicts | Yes, every tool, every device, up to seven days |
| Native apps | Browser on Windows, macOS and Linux, mobile browser on iOS and Android, installable as a web app, no store apps | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, plus the browser |
| Price | Free with one project, Individual $10 a month billed yearly or $11.99 monthly, three invitees per project, Team $45 per unit per shoot day, one time, unlimited collaborators, prep and wrap free, students free | Free plan, then $15, $40 or $90 a month, collaborators free |
Six things I compare, in order
There are six things I compare when I look at tools like these, and those are the script and its revisions, the breakdown and the schedule, the shot list and the storyboards, the call sheet, where you can actually use the thing, and who pays. I go in that order because that’s the order a scripted production moves in. With Think Crew, the second section is the heart of it.
The script and its revisions
The first thing is the script, because on a scripted production the script is where every other document starts.
Think Crew imports the script as a PDF or a Final Draft file, up to ten at once, or as a Scriptation file with the tags already on it, and since the 2025 rewrite the script is editable inside the app: scene headings, action, character, dialogue, shots and transitions, with a scene marked OMIT and words tagged as elements. The Revise Script tool is the part I’d point an AD at. It compares the old draft and the new one, shows every change with red strikethrough and green text and a checkbox per change, covers modified, new, omitted and un-omitted scenes, and ingests what you accept. Each script stores a revision color and a date. What Think Crew doesn’t do is write a script from nothing, and the Scripts page offers only Upload for a new one. It doesn’t open Fountain, it doesn’t lock pages, and its renumbering tool replaces every scene number completely, so a 12A becomes a plain number.
CineLog has a full editor, and it imports .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF and plain text. The part I lean on is what happens on the second import, because a scripted production gets new pages every week. CineLog shows the new draft as a diff against what you already have, scene by scene, and you accept what changed. It doesn’t wipe your breakdown and your shot list to make room for the new file. And once the script is locked, it does the real production thing. A new scene between 12 and 13 becomes 12A, a new page after 16 becomes 16A, and a cut scene prints as OMITTED and keeps its number for good. Every revision round gets its color, the changed lines get their asterisks in the margin, and you can export only the revised pages on that color, because that’s what goes out to the crew on a Tuesday night.
So for Harbor, where the script gets locked about two weeks before day one and then revised every few days, both show the AD what changed and keep the breakdown attached, and Think Crew’s change report is a good one. CineLog also writes the pages and locks them.
The breakdown and the schedule
Now that the script is in, the next thing is the breakdown and the schedule, and this is Think Crew’s home ground, so let’s give it its due.
Think Crew’s import makes a breakdown sheet for every scene, with the interior and exterior, the day and night, the location, the characters from the cues and the page count. Elements get IDs you can renumber and lock, cast carries hold days and the SAG drop-and-pickup rules, and every category knows its type in the Universal Schedule Standard, so a schedule travels. The board is a proper one. Several scenarios share one breakdown, each with its own boards, order, day breaks and calendar. Boards per unit roll up into one day out of days. Day breaks carry the shoot day, the date, the pages, the duration and a call time, and a sort-and-add tool drops them in. A scene splits into 12PT1 and 12PT2 with the eighths divided, and merges back. There’s a recycle bin for the strips you’ve pulled, strip and palette designers, a duration view with the call time and the time of day per scene, and category reports. The day out of days is live, per script or episode, and its totals paste into Movie Magic Budgeting. And the whole thing reads and writes Movie Magic .mmsx and .msd, which almost nothing else in a browser does.
CineLog does the breakdown by selecting text in the script and picking one of twelve categories, and it marks the page with the underline, the circle, the asterisk and the box that people know from paper breakdowns. The thing I like most is what happens with cast. CineLog tags every character on every line they speak, gives each one a numbered talent slot, and that number sits on the strip, in the shot list’s cast column and in the cast grid on the call sheet. You tag once. It shows up everywhere. The stripboard has day breaks, a boneyard for the scenes you haven’t placed yet, the standard strip colors, and it lets you split a scene across two days, because that’s how real days go. A finished day flows straight into that day’s call sheet, and the board exports as a PDF. What CineLog doesn’t have is the day out of days report, the scenarios, the multi-unit boards, the drop-and-pickup rules or the Movie Magic files.
For Harbor, one unit and twelve days, both boards do the job, and Think Crew prints the day out of days. If Harbor were a series with two units and three scenarios on the table, that’s what Think Crew was built for, and I’m not going to argue with it. CineLog’s board is tied to a shot list and a call sheet, which is the next two sections.
Shot lists and storyboards
Now that the days are laid out, the next thing is the shot list, and this one is short.
Think Crew has no shot list and no storyboards. A shot exists only as a script formatting type.
CineLog runs two shot lists off the same shots, a linear one in script order and one per production day, with seventeen default columns, your own columns on top, and your own dropdown values for shot type, angle, lens and movement. You can populate the first pass of the list from the script and then reorder by drag, whole scenes at a time. The Cast & Crew column shows the cast by the same numbers the schedule uses, so one look tells you who’s in the shot. Each shot holds several storyboard frames, and the shot list PDF prints the frames next to the rows. What CineLog doesn’t have is a drawing tool. You bring the frames in as images, from a sketch, a photo or a previs render.
For Harbor, the DP wants the shot list on an iPad at the location scout, in tomorrow’s order, with the cast numbers from the board on it. That’s CineLog, because on Think Crew the DP’s list and the AD’s board never meet.
Call sheets
The next thing is the call sheet, and this is the document the whole crew judges the tool by, because it’s the only part nineteen of our 25 people will ever see.
Think Crew doesn’t build call sheets. It exports the day to Casper, the Excel call sheet workbook its founder co-created and now offers unsupported as a free download, or as a Universal Schedule file to SetHero, or to Call Sheet Commander. Its banners can carry the sunrise and the sunset for the city on the breakdown, and the dashboard shows the weather, credited to the US weather service, so outside the US check what you get. On the day, its Progress Reports log the call, the first shot, lunch and wrap in real time, which is a document the AD department will like.
CineLog’s call sheet pulls the day from the stripboard and the shot list, so the schedule block is a live copy of the day and not a re-typed one, and the cast grid carries the numbers the breakdown gave the cast. It fills the weather and the sunrise and sunset from the location and the date, it carries the nearest hospital and the parking you saved on each location, and it autocompletes the addresses. It sends a personal PDF to each person by email, and for every person you see delivered, opened, confirmed or bounced. And the night before day five, the sheet for day five starts from what day four already knew.
For Harbor, that’s twelve sheets. On CineLog they come off the board. On Think Crew they come off an export into a workbook or a second tool, every time the board changes.
Where you can actually use it
Now that we’ve gone through the documents, the next thing is where you can open them, and here Think Crew does better than most browser tools.
Think Crew runs in Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Safari on Windows, macOS and Linux, and in the phone’s browser on iOS 14 and Android 10 or later, where you can install it to the home screen as a web app. There’s no app on any store. Offline is real: their help says you can use the platform end to end without a connection, once you’ve downloaded each document for offline use, inside one project at a time, with conflicts resolved by the last update winning, and no stated time limit. Several people edit live, with avatars showing who’s in the schedule, and permissions per document.
CineLog is a native app on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, and it also runs in a browser at app.cinelog.com. Every device keeps a local copy of the project, so the shot list, the script and the call sheets open with no signal at all. You can work offline for up to seven days after you’ve signed in, and when the connection comes back, your changes and everyone else’s merge in the background. The people you invite get view or edit rights per tool.
For me, for example, this is the one that decides it, because I’ve never been on a location where the signal was good in every room, and the AD walks it with a phone. On Harbor, the AD walks the stone-walled house with the schedule open and moves tomorrow’s first scene to the afternoon, right there. Think Crew gives you that in a phone’s browser, if the documents were downloaded first and nobody else edited the same strip. CineLog gives you that in the app, with the DP’s change merged in.
Pricing, and who pays for the crew
And the last thing is the money, and here Think Crew has two models and CineLog has one.
Think Crew’s Free plan has one project, or five by the feature grid on the same page, and a free user can be invited to anyone’s project but can’t print, export or invite. Individual is $10 a month billed yearly, $120, or $11.99 billed monthly, per user, with unlimited projects and three invited collaborators per project. Team is a production price: $45 per unit per shoot day, paid once, with prep and wrap free, unlimited collaborators, and every invitee getting the full features whatever their own plan. Their own example is 35 days at $45, $1,575. Students at accredited schools get it free. There’s no trial on the pricing page.
CineLog has a free plan with one project, every tool, offline mode, and two collaborators. Filmmaker is $15 a month with three projects and twenty collaborators. Production Company is $40 with ten projects and fifty collaborators. Studio is $90 with thirty projects and a hundred collaborators. There are no seats. The people you invite make a free account and get view or edit rights on the project, based on what you give them, and one subscription unlocks the app on every platform.
So let’s put Harbor on it. Six editors, nineteen readers, one project, twelve shoot days.
| Tool | Plan for Harbor | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Think Crew | Team, because Individual stops at three invitees per project | $540 once, for the breakdown and the board |
| CineLog | Production Company, all 25 on the project | $40 a month, for the chain from script to call sheet |
That’s not a comparison of two prices. It’s a comparison of two jobs. Think Crew charges the production for the board. CineLog charges the production for everything from the script to the call sheet.
What neither of them does
A quick word on what both leave out, because it’s the reason every production I’ve been on still had a spreadsheet open.
The budget. Neither has one, though Think Crew’s day out of days totals paste into Movie Magic Budgeting.
Text delivery. Neither sends anything by SMS. Think Crew sends nothing, CineLog sends by email.
Post. Both stop at wrap. Review, approval and delivery are a separate tool and a separate bill.
A quick exercise before you pick
So here’s a quick exercise before you move on to a trial.
First, count the units and the scenarios. If the AD needs two boards and a third option on the table with one day out of days across them, Think Crew’s scenarios and unit boards are the reason to use it, and CineLog doesn’t have them. If the answer is one board, read on.
Second, write down where the call sheet will come from. If it’s a workbook or a second tool fed by an export, add the subscription and the export every time the board changes. On CineLog the sheet is the board.
Third, count the people who will change the plan. Three fit on Think Crew’s Individual plan. More than three means the Team price for the production. On CineLog the number to count is zero.
The bottom line
Think Crew is a serious AD’s scheduler in a browser, with scenarios, units, a live day out of days and Movie Magic files on both ends, built by someone who did the job. CineLog is the pick for the scripted shoot with a real crew, because the script, the board, the shot list and the call sheet are one project, every person gets their own sheet with a status on it, the whole crew is on it for one price, and it runs as a native app on a phone in the basement. That’s Think Crew vs CineLog.
Questions people ask
Is CineLog an alternative to Think Crew?
For the breakdown and the board on a single-unit shoot, yes, and CineLog adds the script editor, the shot list and the call sheets around it. For scenarios, multi-unit boards, a day out of days and Movie Magic round trips, that’s what Think Crew does and CineLog doesn’t.
Which one is cheaper for a crew of 25?
CineLog, at $40 a month on Production Company with everyone on the project. Think Crew’s Team plan is $45 per unit per shoot day, $540 for a twelve-day shoot, with unlimited collaborators, and its $10-a-month Individual plan allows three invitees per project.
Which one works offline on set?
Both. Think Crew works end to end offline once each document is downloaded, one project at a time, with the last update winning on a conflict. CineLog works offline on every device, including phones, for every tool, up to seven days, and merges everyone’s changes after.
Does Think Crew make call sheets?
No. It exports the day to the Casper workbook, to SetHero or to Call Sheet Commander. CineLog builds the sheet from the schedule day and sends it per person with delivery and confirmation tracking.
Which one handles the script and its revisions?
CineLog writes from a blank page, locks pages and scene numbers, colors revisions and exports the revised pages. Think Crew edits an imported Final Draft or PDF script, compares a new draft with a change report, stores a revision color per script and doesn’t lock pages.
Which one prints a day out of days?
Think Crew, live, per script or episode and across units. CineLog doesn’t print the report yet.
Does Think Crew have a shot list?
No. CineLog runs a shot list in script order and per production day with the cast numbers from the board on it.
Do my collaborators need to pay?
On CineLog, no. They make a free account and get the rights you give them. On Think Crew, free users can be invited to a project, Individual owners can invite three people per project, and the Team production price makes collaborators unlimited.
Can Think Crew read Movie Magic files?
Yes. It imports and exports .mmsx and .msd, along with the Universal Schedule Standard it wrote and Cinapse files. CineLog doesn’t read or write Movie Magic files.
Can I switch from Think Crew to CineLog?
Yes. Bring the script into CineLog as .fdx or PDF and import your contacts from a spreadsheet. CineLog doesn’t read .mmsx, .msd or Universal Schedule files, so the breakdown is re-tagged on the page, with the cast numbered for you, and the board is rebuilt by drag.
To recap
To recap, in this article we talked about picking on production shape instead of feature count, we walked six things in order, the script and its revisions, the breakdown and the schedule, the shot list and the storyboards, the call sheet, where you can use it, and who pays, and we put a twelve-day, 25-person feature on both price lists. Think Crew is the AD’s board in a browser, with Movie Magic on both ends, priced per user or per production. CineLog is the chain for the crew, from the first draft to the last call sheet, on any device, for one price.
If you want to see the CineLog chain for yourself, the Free plan is one project with every tool, and you make the account inside the app after you download it. So put your own Harbor on it, and then move on to the part that matters, which is the shoot.